IT Best Practices

Inside IT: Evaluating Small Devices in the Enterprise

Intel IT's New Criteria for Evaluating Small Devices

David Byrne, Handheld Technology Specialist, Intel IT

We use the pre-evaluation screening to focus on the top three to five handheld OSs, including those for smart phones and tablets. Within this scope, we further evaluate the most popular hardware models running on popular OSs.

The cornerstone of our screening process is the criteria we use, which were compiled by consulting with stakeholders across Intel. We grouped the criteria into five key categories of features and services that make small devices good candidates for support in the enterprise: security, manageability, productivity, performance, and ease-of-use.

We score each OS version or new device against the criteria to determine the devices we want to further investigate. This initial screening process enables us to do the following:

Keep up with the increasing demand from Intel employees who want to use their personal handheld devices to access corporate data and applications

Allocate IT resources more efficiently by eliminating inappropriate devices from the full evaluation process

Focus on only the viable candidates, which allows us to finish an evaluation in as little as two weeks after a new device is available for purchase

With this process, employees can anticipate which personal devices they can and cannot use at Intel, and IT can support the growing demand for use of these devices in our environment, while preserving the necessary security and manageability our enterprise requires.

We have an incredible array of devices that give us powerful compute ability and mobility. We’re more connected, more agile and more productive than ever. Intel IT has been grappling with how to accommodate the workforce’s need for mobility.